When this mic and its cousin, the M-16 first came through the door we were all pre-disposed to hating them. Chinese capsules in a mic being sold by Mercenary Audio? Paleeeeze!! ... but we put them up anyway, we had promised the guys at T'funk we would, so we did.

Their first duty was as overheads on a demo drum tracking session [in other words; it was just a demo, we had some latitude] and son-of -a-bitch if they weren't awesome!! Then we tried them on acoustic guitar. Again, awesome. Vocals? Now came the real test. The AK-47 was put in a lineup with the M-16, the Brauner "KHE" [of which there were only 100 made!!], a Soundelux E-49 and a Microtech Gefell UM-75 [of which there were only 75 made!]. I figured the two T'funk mics wouldn't hold a candle to the cream of the cream in our room. I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

The TELEFUNKEN AK-47 can stand tall with many of the world's finest microphones with its head held high and its chest puffed out. At $1700.00, it may actually be the best value in the entire Mercenary offering of products. Damn clever what can happen when you put an American built amplifier inside [complete with a New Old Stock Telefunken EF732 sub miniature tube] a mic with a Chinese body and very well controlled capsule quality.

When we were getting close to pulling the trigger on the TELEFUNKEN line we made them send over 6 units. We called them at 3pm the day we wanted them shipped so they couldn't pick the units they were sending... and again, the consistency from microphone to microphone was as good as you'd get from any of the German manufacturers.